India steps up medical diplomacy, flies plane loads of medicines to friends

Officials said the government was sending drugs to Bhutan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal, Myanmar, Seychelles, Mauritius and some African countries.

Updated on: Apr 9, 2020, 15:14:56 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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India has begun sending consignments of life-saving drugs as gifts to neighbouring countries to help them fight the coronavirus pandemic, South Block officials said on Thursday.

Protective suits for medical use being produced at a factory, in Noida. (Sunil Ghosh / Hindustan Times)

Officials said the government was sending drugs to Bhutan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal, Myanmar, Seychelles, Mauritius and some African countries. One of the early consignments, an Air India plane with 10 tonnes of medicine, was sent to Sri Lanka on Tuesday.

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While neighbouring countries are being gifted consignments of paracetamol and hydroxychloroquine, the government has also cleared export of Covid-19 drugs to countries such as US, Spain, Brazil, Bahrain, Germany and the UK in line with the commercial contracts signed with Indian pharmaceutical companies.

“Instructions to this effect have been issued by the commerce ministry, “said a senior official. It was pointed that the exports from special economic zones were allowed after steps were taken to secure supplies that India might need if the worst-case Covid-19 scenario plays out.

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It was after this assessment that India eased restrictions on export of hydroxychloroquine to the US and other countries that prompted US President Donald Trump to tweet his ‘ thank you’ note to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the people of India.

India is also keeping a special watch on drug requirements of Gulf countries. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is in touch with his counterparts in the Gulf.

“Besides, India is constantly in touch with the Indo-Pacific countries and those countries like US, France, UK, Spain and Italy who have been hit by the pandemic very severely,” said the official.

Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla will also speak to his Russian counterpart today to discuss the overall pandemic situation as well as offer to supply any life saving drugs to the strategic partner.

India is buying medical equipment from Beijing through private suppliers as China is the only country that has surplus supplies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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